Pain & Paper: Turning Wounds to Words

CW: Mentions of substance abuse, mental health issues, and death.

Mama,

It’s almost your birthday. You would have been sixty-eight, but you never made it past fifty-eight. I’m lucky, I guess. A lot of people lose a parent, or both parents, when they’re really young. I was twenty-five. The age when you’re supposed to be coming out of your wild youth and merging onto, or at least close to, your life path. Not me though. I didn’t have a wild youth. I had a wild you. My youth was spent navigating the consequences of your mistakes and vowing to myself that I wouldn’t make the same ones and more importantly, that I wouldn’t be like you.

I hated you as much as I loved you and that made me hate part of me too. I didn’t want to be the girl with the drug addicted and alcoholic mom. The girl who couldn’t invite her friends over to the house because she was afraid of what they might see or find out. The girl who was fed, and clothed, and taken care of by people in church and the adults who noticed something was wrong at school. The girl with the exhausted father who tried, and sometimes failed, to make ends meet working himself to the bone because her mom stole money from his wallet for drugs and ran off with his car for a week or two while he showered off the grease and grime of twelve hour workdays. The girl with stories about how her mom was arrested, how generational and newly inflicted trauma led her sisters down similar roads, how police and other first responders knew us by name and by that family. I didn’t want to be the girl that hated her mom. But for a long time, I was, and I thought I always would be.

If you asked me the exact moment that it changed, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I know it wasn’t when I found your body one morning after everyone else had gone to work. I know it wasn’t at your memorial service where I was one of the few who showed up and the only one who could be bothered to give the eulogy. I know it wasn’t six months after you had passed when strange things started happening around the house like doors and cabinets opening or the too-familiar-to-be-forgotten sounds of your footfalls in the middle of the night carving the well worn path from your armchair where you slept because it hurt too much to lie down to the bathroom. I know it wasn’t a year later when we finally began to go through your things and there was nothing any of us wanted to hold onto. Whenever it did happen, it came after that because I couldn’t feel the pain of your loss while I was still dealing with the pain you had caused us while living.

Part of me knew, I think. It knew that I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hate you forever. That part of me kept some of your ashes and divided up one of your figurine collections among my sisters and myself. That part of me hung onto pictures of you. My favorite one is from before. Before I was born. Before you turned to drugs to deal with your past you kept hidden when you were sober, but couldn’t stop from leaking out of you like your tears on the nights you drank when your usual angry drunk side was muted by resurfacing sorrow. You were young, vibrant, and full of life and love that I only saw in glimpses growing up. Like the night I couldn’t sleep when I was fourteen and you couldn’t either. I laid my head in your lap and you stroked my hair until I dozed off. Or how you would always make me chicken and dumplings from scratch when I was sick. Or the time when you gave me a copy of your favorite book, Little Women, with a note inside just for me because I shared your love of reading.

I wish I had been able to know that version of you. I wish I had known you better at all. I wish I could have helped you heal your trauma instead of spreading it even though that isn’t the burden a child should carry. And I didn’t carry it. I had, and have, different burdens instead. Just as heavy as that one might have been and complete with my own trauma to work through too. Which I am. Every day, little by little. Much like with me no longer hating you, I’m not sure when I started the process. When I started healing myself instead of hating you. I only know they go hand-in-hand — like we did on your good days.

So that’s why I’m writing to you, Mama. I wanted to tell you that I don’t hate you and being able to love the good parts I remember of you has helped me love myself too. I know you’d be happy that I’m doing well. That I’m not like you. I don’t have to drown out the past with drinking and drugs. I defeat those dark days by living in the light. By laughing. By loving. By letting go. Part of the latter means saying things I didn’t get to or want to say before you left us for the last time.

Goodbye and happy would-have-been birthday, Mama. I’ll celebrate it for and because of you this year. I’ll drink Diet Coke even though I hate it because it was your actual favorite drink. I’ll read Little Women. I’ll make chicken and dumplings using your recipes. I'll light incense that smells like your favorite patchouli perfumes next to your ashes. I’ll tell all the good stories about you that I remember to anyone who will listen. I’ll show them the picture where you look happy, healthy, and whole. But most importantly, I’ll fully forgive you and myself for being human and dealing with life and each other in the only ways we could at the time with what we had.

Love finally and forever,

Your Daughter